Just inside the entrance and visible through the plate glass window that leads in from the hallway, a bloated lozenge floats, supported from below, in an oddly visceral pink bulb. From one corner, a white tassel hangs. Conjuring both entrails and a soiled gown, the protuberance is invasive. These works do indeed take up space, but it is more of a psychological than a physical space. That aspect is echoed in the draped fiber artworks hanging from ceiling to floor behind it. In this tripartite installation, interwoven sections of patches looping and ad hoc stitching accumulate. Interspersed throughout are 2D works, in which colorful cutouts cavort in pictorial space like some strange undersea accretions vying for a place on their own disorderly coral reef.

The freestanding pillow work belongs to Michele Carla Handel. Along with For Hannah (2017), it works with the same admix of somewhat dainty though certainly distressed garment-like elements. This medium-sized almost hourglass-shaped work is lined below by pink tassels that hang next to longer strands of thicker black ribbons. As pink paint moves up the plasticized surface, it goes from being skin-like to dots over an off-green, yellow tinted plane and then finally expands off the wall in a tubular ballooning. This free-style, pulpy and viscous corset sits on the wall awkwardly. Nearly a caricature, it assumes the quality of a burlesque costume as it goes through its provocative yet immobile paces.

Sarajo Frieden, Untitled 912 (2017), courtesy of the artist and Tiger Strikes Asteroid.

Likewise the fiber ensemble by Dawn Ertl (very similar to her The Warmth of Your Embrace installation she created at her Mass MoCA residency last year) is gangly, although not as visceral. It too clearly references the body, but more from the inside. Three flattened planes of yarn tumble to the ground appearing to be the byproduct of an impromptu collection of fragments. Small patches hang in the denser skeins, wilder knots and other more loose aggregations wend their way between larger strands almost as though they are webs. The network is ceding, the atmosphere changing.

The cutout works by Sarajo Frieden gallivant blithely throughout the color spectrum. Utilizing the micro textures of the cutouts to reference a deeper and shallower space, these compositions pulsate. Emerging squiggles and swirls move up and down the vertical plane of the painting anchored by a vertebra-like purple element that is, in turn, secured by a beige pin. Oscillating between Matisse-ian gestural curlicues and organ-like forms, the unnamed compositions speak about microscopic, or invisible, processes.

Taking Up Space Install shot, work by Dawn Ertl and Sarajo Frieden, courtesy of the artist and Tiger Strikes Asteroid

Taking Up Space synthesizes without homogenizing the TSA (Tiger Strikes Asteroid) projects in which artist organizers present other artists from their community and put together a ground-level view of what is happening in current artistic milieu today. On this outing, artist-organizer Stacy Wendt has collated art, which unlike the very understated title for the group, is not just taking up space but working to be visible and quite present, too.